Catherine Nash

Catherine Nash’s research interests lie in feminist cultural geography and are focused on geographies of identity, relatedness and belonging. Her work explores the meaning of ancestry and origins in the making of ethnic, national and diasporic identities through research of traditional and new forms of genealogical practices.

Her book, Of Irish Descent: Origin Stories, Genealogy, and The Politics of Belonging (Syracuse University Press, 2008), talks about the ideas of ancestry and origins in relation to the politics of belonging in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States. She is currently addressing the remaking of ideas of identity and relatedness in human population genetics and geneticized genealogy.  She is a professor of Human Geography at Queen Mary, University of London.

Her interests in geographies of identity and belonging also inform her research on cultural policy in Northern Ireland and on the practised, symbolic and material dimensions of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.